So far the White House is standing admirably firm in the face of the GOP's growing list of absurd demands in exchange for a debt-ceiling lift, saying it's Republicans' "constitutional responsibility" to do, well, to just do its goddamn job.
That seems a reasonable-enough expectation from the president, does it not?--for one of America's two major parties to behave like it's one of America's two major parties? Yet as the GOP plunges us daily into a phantasmagorically obscene sequence of fiscal events, on the streets you'd never know it.
The streets are quiet.
Which led me to wondering: What if the circumstances were reversed? What if a President Romney were trying simply to do his job by asking a Democratic House to do its job and raise the debt ceiling so that the nation and possibly the world would be spared a ruinous act of insanity, and that Democratic House simply said No?
Would our streets still be quiet?
In late 2000, upon the mere prospect of legitimate presidential votes being counted, Republican goons stormed the counting house and essentially demonstrated an eagerness to unleash a civil war--unless they got their way, their count, their man.
Thus it now requires little imagination to assess the probable Republican rank-and-file response to such a ruthlessly intransigent Democratic House.
And yet, reverse that situation--that is, ponder today's reality--and what do we have on the streets? Just another day.
And that, I think, says a lot about at least one fundamental and exceedingly critical difference between America's left and right.